Ocak Isik Yurtçu

From WikiLeaks

Freedom of press and association are still highly contested rights in Turkey - Ocak Isik Yurtcu, a former newspaper editor, waves his 1996 International Press Freedom award

Reporting the truth from Turkish Kurdistan.

"Nobody in the world has been sentenced to so many years in prison for articles others have written," he said from his jail cell in an interview with the daily Yeni Yuzyil. Yurtçu, former editor in chief of the now-defunct daily Özgür Gündem, is serving a 15-year sentence for disseminating "separatist propaganda." The case against him was based on articles about the Kurdish conflict published in Özgür Gündem in 1991 and 1992. For three years running, Turkey has held more journalists in prison than any other country. Yurtçu's case is emblematic of the types of charges used by the government to imprison dozens of reporters, editors, and columnists. Yurtçu was convicted of violating Articles 6, 7, and 8 of the Anti-Terror Law and Article 312 of the Penal Code. These articles in effect classify all reports on the Kurdish rebellion other than the government's as either "incitement to racial hatred" or propaganda for the insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK. During Yurtçu's tenure, which began in 1991, Özgür Gündem was widely read and respected as an unbiased newspaper that offered readers an alternative to the inadequate coverage of the Kurdish issue by the mainstream, pro-government media. And it also broke new ground with its hard-hitting reporting on the fighting between the military and the PKK guerrillas in the country's Southeast.